In 2014, Italian rogue businessman Carl Esprey listed a company dubbed as Atlas on the Nairobi Securities Exchange by placement. The company started trading at Sh. 11.5 per share and its placement on NSE saw Mr. Esprey raised some Sh. 450.1 million. It had a remarkable debut market capitalization of Sh. 4.9 billion.
But over the next three years, the Atlas stock took a nose dive as it became evident that the company was in the business of selling hot air, had no concrete foundations and traceable chances of recovery.
From the listing price of Sh. 11.5 per share, the stock hit a rock bottom of Sh. 1.05 in May when it was suspended by the Capital Markets Authority.
The company is among a few companies that have been listing on the NSE’s GEMS category which is less stringent on the listing rules. However, it is on this category that investors have lost most of their money.
The suspension of Atlas followed the closure of the company’s Kenyan operations by Mr. Esprey. Following the closure, Mr. Esprey took Atlas ventures into a number of countries including Ethiopia, before he disappeared with tens of millions of unsuspecting investors’ money.
For a start, Mr. Esprey took the company to Ethiopia where he claimed that some Sh. 244 million he had set aside to build a glass-bottle was forcefully seized by the Ethiopian tax administrators. Reports further said that Mr. Esprey then alleged to have invested some Sh. 50 million in a Nigerian betting firm known as BonanzaWin.
Now, the controversial businessman is back with a bhang business. Apparently, he has formed a new company with the son of the late UN secretary general Kofi Annan and is in the process of seeking to export medical cannabis from African countries to Canada. “African Cannabis is a Toronto-based company incorporated in British Columbia in 2018 to deal in the production, cultivation, extraction and export of medical cannabis in multiple African countries,” Mr. Esprey’s new company says.
To fund his latest business, Mr. Esprey is also looking to raise some Sh. 1.5 billion in a private placement in Canada.
Analysts say that Mr. Esprey might be aiming to lure unsuspecting investors follow a boom in the price of cannabis founded stocks on the Canada securities market. For example, cannabis stocks such as Cronos Group, have risen by more than 100 per cent this year after the legalization of bhang in Canada.